Trauma OR #3

Monday 26 October 2009

I don’t usually post much about the specifics of my job on this blog for several reasons. The most important reason is to maintain operational security, the second is that I sometimes prefer to keep my thoughts and feelings private until I have a chance to ruminate over them for a while. Tonight I can’t help myself.

It was reported in the news that there were three helicopter crashes in Afghanistan, today, with 14 US service members killed. Late this afternoon, 13 casualties from the crashes arrived in the trauma room (emergency room) at Bagram, simultaneously. I had the privilege of operating on two of them tonight. Prior to the first patient being taken back to the OR, one of the other patients came up to him and hugged him, as best you can hug someone who is laying on a gurney with his face encrusted with dried blood. Apparently, the patient on the gurney was a medic and had pulled six people out of a burning helicopter before it was engulfted in flames. He didn’t remember doing it, but his friend informed him that he had saved six lives today.

While I miss my wife and children with a passion and intensity that no words can describe, there is no place on this earth that I would rather have been, tonight, than in trauma OR #3, helping to care for this soldier. I am thankful to my family for being strong and supportive enough to allow me to be here. Thank you, Barbara.